


forever was never till now

by adannu



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adannu/pseuds/adannu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She is queen of a dead world, and she is queen still.</em>
</p>
<p>Also known as the one where the city without a name took John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen.

When the radio call on one of the command staff channels interrupts the supply meeting that John is having with Elizabeth, the civilian leader of Atlantis, he huffs a half-laugh as they listen to the familiar, accented plea, "Colonel. _Prosim_. Come and take Dr. McKay, before the engineers, they rise and stage a coup. And  feed Rodney also, yes?"

He glances across the table at Elizabeth who exhales a sigh and nods. "Alright, Dr. Z, I'm on my way." That done, he returns her nod, smiling as he pushes back from the conference table to go find his friend. She returns the smile a trifle tightly and waves a hand. "We'll talk about the military supply requisitions later, Colonel. Maybe by that point Major Lorne will be back."

John laughs and waves a hand on his way out the door. "That'll make it easier to get through them. Better him than me."

But when John arrives at Rodney's usual lab haunts, Rodney's protests have the note that means he's serious. "Go away, Colonel, and don't bother me. I'm working," Rodney mutters as he flaps a hand without looking up from his laptop to see whether John is really going or not. Or stopping scrolling through the data on his screen at almost inhuman speed. "I have to finish reviewing these proposals for our staff meeting." And Zelenka shakes his head at John as he peers across from his own workbench.

So John gives Zelenka a little smile that Zelenka returns with a put-upon smile of his own, and turns back to his discussion. John wanders around the main lab, giving it a few more minutes before his next attempt to pry the wild Rodney out of the lab.

John tilts his head at the piles of artifacts on the benches, some in pieces and some not, and bends to peer into the boxes stacked by the walls to see if anything in there is new. The sign taped to the wall above saying ''DO NOT EVER, EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TOUCH THESE'' in Rodney''s distinctive scrawl always makes him grin, and today is no different.

Then he sees the ball resting on a large wad of rags at a corner table, like a child's idea of a bird's nest. It's the size of an undersized bowling ball, only without the finger holes. John angles his head to try to read the stacked papers resting underneath, but the topmost sheet is thickly filled with chemical equations and names that make his eyes swim.

When he touches the ball curiously, there is a flash and a high thin note that spirals up until everyone in the lab clutches at their ears, and he staggers back. The silence that falls is deafening until Rodney shoots up, grabbing John by the wrist, and takes a breath.

"Sheppard! What part of 'Do not ever, ever under any circumstances, touch these,' did you not understand?" John opens his mouth, but Rodney rolls right over his protests to snap about being careful and breaking priceless artifacts and then he complains about breaking messy-haired colonels who think they're a dime a dozen as he tows John to the infirmary in double-time. "And that's a _Canadian dime_ , Colonel," he adds almost savagely.

Jogging easily besides Rodney, John has to smirk a little at the buried compliment in the rant, which hasn't stopped despite the speed of Rodney's stalk.

Half a pace behind them, Zelenka says sharply, "The materials engineers, they tried a small amount of explosives on the ball a month ago, and nothing happened. No chips, no dust, nothing. Ibrahim suggested it was an overgrown shot put."

"Ibrahim is an idiot whose degree came from a Crackerjack box," Rodney gives Zelenka a narrow look that gets transferred back to John just as quickly as he picks up his diatribe again.

The on-duty medic beckons John over to a gurney and starts to examine John for any damage, and the inevitable question comes as the medic shines a light into each of John's eyes. "How do you feel, sir?"

"I'm fine," John says even as he rubs at his ears pointedly and gives Rodney an elaborately hurt look.

Several hours of testing later, even Rodney is forced to admit that John really is all right and that no, the ball will not and has not done anything else. So they stroll out of the infirmary. Or John does, giving Rodney's disgruntlement a bright smirk as he heads off to his next meeting, and the ball is set aside in a large box on Rodney's worktable with an even bigger 'DO NOT TOUCH OR I WILL HAVE RONON BREAK YOUR FINGERS LIKE TWIGS. THIS MEANS YOU.' sign on top.

But a day later, John is gone.

*          *          *

Sergeant Bates was supposed to meet John in the armory to start doing the monthly inventory during first shift.

Instead, Rodney is standing in the infirmary, staring around at the beds filled with the half-stunned contents of the Gate room third shift. And there are partial records of a gate activation to an address that Atlantis cannot read. He'd shouldered his way in past a madhouse of just woken soldiers and infirmary staff, and several scientists who hadn't gone to bed yet.

He stares in silence, rubbing his fingers over his arms. At last he transfers his stare to Bates and the lead doctor, absently noticing the shadows of worry underneath the latter's eyes. "What happened, Carson?  Where's Sheppard? What did he _do_?"

"We don't know." Carson shakes his head grimly. Holding up a hand to forestall Rodney's next words, he pauses as Elizabeth barrels in with Major Lorne, and continues with a nod at the nearest semiconscious soldier, "Sheppard did this. Stunned everyone and then Gated out."

"He – what." Rodney stares at Beckett, but there is no sign of it being a merciful joke or a nightmare. Just to check, he gives himself a savage pinch on the arm and yelps. "What the _hell_ was he _thinking_?"

"We think he may have been under the influence," Lorne begins. "Elizabeth, I've taken steps and changed our security measures to ones that the Colonel didn't set up himself. He'd rather cut off his own hand than…"

Elizabeth nods, although not without a sharper look at Lorne. "Good move, Major, but I wish you'd notified me before doing it."

"We didn't – we don't know if he's under someone's influence, and we didn't want to take the chance." 

After a moment, "The Gateroom. Are there—" Rodney snaps his fingers.

"I had Chuck pull the critical parts of the logs off to a share on the server," Bates puts in, scrubbing his fingers through his hair as he nods at Lorne. "Sir."

"Right," Rodney snarls as he props his open laptop against his chest with one hand and dives in to stare at the partial logs, scrolling down faster than most people could read.

At last he looks up, expression bitter. "That's it. This proves that Atlantis just rolls over like a _dog_ for the Colonel. This should _not_ be possible _at all_. And _what the fucking hell_ was he thinking?"

"I'm not sure he _was_. Dr. McKay, could you go check his quarters with Sergeant Bates? There could be some evidence about _why_ ," Lorne suggests.

The door slides open for the latest arrival, and Rodney grabs her arm, carefully avoiding the P-90 swinging from her shoulder. "Teyla, you're with Bates and me." He carefully ignores the armed – literally – détente in the looks that the other two exchange in favor of getting to John's quarters as fast as Atlantis's transporters can take them.

When they check his quarters, his pack is sagging in a corner, still half-empty from the team's last mission to a place that Rodney says is called PX5-890 and Teyla says is called Hesperea, ready to be filled with fresh clothing and supplies.

Suspicions borne out, Rodney heads back at a run, Bates and Teyla hot on his heels, shouting at Zelenka over the channel that the science department heads use.

In his lab, Rodney and the just-woken Zelenka wrestle the ball back out of the closet, swearing in at least five languages between the two of them. They call Elizabeth in between profane exchanges.

As a non-gene carrier, Zelenka settles the ball onto a new nest of hastily-collected rags while they all stand around one of the central tables, staring at it. Very carefully not touching it.

Finally, after several rapid-fire radio conversations with the command staff and Bates, the arrangements are made. A medical team is standing by to observe closely, and a pair of soldiers are stationed at the doors, with another pair just outside, Wraith stunners in hand.

Taking a deep breath, Lorne reaches out a couple of fingers to touch the smooth surface of the ball, and thinks, 'on'.

There is no white flash.

Instead, a series of notes plays, scraping across everyone's ears. A pause, and then fifteen notes pierce the air as the ball whistles -- eight notes, a rest, and then seven more notes over and over in an insistent rhythm. The discordant notes make everyone shudder, and a few even plug their ears until Lorne clutches at the ball and hastily thinks 'off' again.

"What the _hell_ was that?" one of the soldiers asks. A glance from Bates, and he blinks and tacks on a belated, "Sir."

"That..." An uneasy expression in his eyes, their other resident Pegasus native starts as he leans on the door frame, gun dangling from his fingers. "Haven't heard that one in a long time."

Rodney stares over the table at him, eyes wide as he grasps after words for a moment. "W-what. Ronon. That was a _song?_ I thought it was about to explode and take us all out in a bloody, ineradicable mess!"

"Yeah." Seeing everyone's expressions, Ronon adds, "Lullaby. Goes by thirds, nine notes to a _novete_. Used to be popular a few of your centuries ago." His frown at the ball is fierce, as though it might suddenly roll off the table, sprout legs, and start attacking people. When he does meet Rodney's eyes, his gaze is shuttered.  

Then Ronon leans back out of the lab to call Teyla in from her position further down the hall. "Play it again." The sounds are no more pleasant to the Lanteans the second time around and the soldiers stationed at the door twitch noticeably, but wash over Ronon and Teyla with no visible sign of discomfort from them.

With an elaborate shudder, Lorne ends the replay and looks hopefully at Teyla. "Does that mean anything to you?"

Not waiting for a response, Rodney looks down at it thoughtfully, muttering half to himself and half to Zelenka in the next seat over. "How the hell is it doing it? There're no electronics in there that we could find, absolutely nothing but whatever material that's made of. Let alone however it got hold of whatever passes for a brain under that hair of his. Contact? Sound?"

Not without a brief smile at the back of Rodney's downturned head, Teyla hesitates as she thinks. "I have heard of a world where the people named their Ring the... singing gate. It is said that if the right person laid a hand on the dialing device, that the device would sing for them. The notes sounded much like the ones in that song."

"Thirty-six notes," Zelenka glances at Rodney, who nods hastily, already running with the idea. "That fits the _novete_. And four _novetes_ for the Gate symbols –"

"A Gate address, yes, yes, of course." Rodney snaps his fingers as the realization hits him. "Has to be, it's the only logical reason the goddamn bowling ball would do that."

"But how to determine the symbol each note corresponds to--"

"We'll get there." Rodney clicks his radio on sharply. "Shapiro? Right, right, never mind your beauty sleep. The Colonel's gone missing. Get your ass over to Lab 23. You're needed to help decode a Gate address." That done, he clicks the radio off and turns back to trying to coax just a little more information out of the Gate logs about the address as they wait for Dr. Shapiro.

But the glare over his shoulder at Ronon shows that Rodney hasn't forgotten his comments and that he fully intends to pelt Ronon with questions later. Ronon huffs, the brief expression of amusement that he'd worn dropping away sharply.

"Ronon and I will work with your Dr. Shapiro," Teyla inclines her head. "Perhaps between the three of us, we can solve this puzzle." Despite the worry hiding in her eyes, she can't quite resist adding,  "I thought that the song was very nice." 

*          *          *

The Gate flickers shut behind John, and he lets out a slow breath, and then breathes in the too-warm air. The Gate is on a hill (dry grass and dust under his boots) above what looks like a city in the distance. On his tour in Afghanistan, he saw more life than this. He starts downhill, away from the Gate, toward the walled spires.

It's a long walk, but John persists despite the sun beating down on him. He keeps his hands on his P-90, watchful. The grass is growing so thickly that he can barely feel the gravel under his boots that tells him there used to be a trail. It could be five, ten years old. _Or ten thousand_ , a voice says, but he dismisses it. Something called him here, though, and he wants to know what it was.

The gate in the wall that he passes through is deserted, not even a trace of life at the foot of the wall. Every wall that he's seen had at least a few weeds, some insects, maybe a sleek jewel-eyed lizard or two.

He briefly entertains the thought of calling Atlantis to let them know where he is, but discards it. There'll be plenty of time to let the archeologists foam at the mouth over this world later, but if there's any danger, he needs to check it out now. Instead, he unslings his P-90 and walks on into the city, cautious.

Later, after John has explored nearly a klick of winding streets, he decides to pick a home base, as exploration could take a while. He picks the most intact of the abandoned houses almost at random and takes his jacket off, leaving it there.

He spirals out from the house, peering into windows and around corners, walking down quiet streets. The city is silent, but it still feels oddly _right_ here (just like home), home more than the other city he left behind, more than even Earth. The towers and arches are ruined, but enough of them still reach toward the sky to give him an obscure comfort. He shifts his grip on his P-90 and walks on, jaw set.

There isn't much food or water for him in the city. His tac vest is empty of supplies, his jacket folded over itself in a house behind him, and he pauses, shoulders light, hesitating.

For a breath, he stands there in the street, irresolute.

And then he moves on again, taking a step and another further into the city, exploring (searching). He spends most of his time moving further up and in, wandering under the brass-beaten bowl of the sky. There is never any wind.

Block after block of houses and buildings filled with dust and little else. His eyes and nose and mouth are gritty in sympathy with the city and how she must feel here in the desert.

The suns wheel large across the sullen sky until John's skin is tight and hot, and he shivers, wondering when night will come. He knows – remembers – that the city will be cold then. Afghanistan had taught him that much, and more.

His stomach growls and he ignores it until he stumbles onto the storeroom full of wax-stopped amphorae (huge and cool against his hands). Some of them are full of a dark liquid that makes him retch, and he hastily drops the stopper back in place. But a few hold dried beans, still whole after all this time. Memories of survival rise in him, and he soaks the beans in some precious water pulled from a well in a distant courtyard with a jury-rigged bucket. It's not much, but it will keep him alive. Until he's found what he came here for, and the skin prickles on his neck and shoulders, under his uniform.

There are no bodies, not even bones. In a city like this, it makes sense, he thinks distantly as he presses his back into the shadow of the well and laps at the water in the palms of his hands.

He finds a still-open route to the building near the center of the city. Other routes are choked with fallen stone, with crumbling wood and metal. With a hauntingly familiar central spire, it's drawn him ever since he looked up over the roofs of the city, hung over the surrounding buildings like a spear of shadow. He walks, eyes on the distant spire. And for the first time he's going forward and not to the side or turning back.

Inside the spire, there are stairs turning upward and out from the first floor, but he doesn't like the look of them. Opposite the stairs, a door hanging askew reveals a small room off the hall, and he heads toward it instead. He picks his way across red and dun tile as grit shifts under his soles.

In the room, there is a desk, and on it are papers. Remembering the tile and the stairs, he bends closer without touching. Half-hidden under a sheaf of paper-shaped dust is a faint picture outlined with what might have been gold leaf, once. In the picture a woman in feathered robes (smile sharp and yellow) half-turns. The dark and light pattern reminds him of the eyes on a peacock's tail. He can't see the rest of the picture, and the paper falls to dust when he breathes out in frustration.

The dust billows, and he wipes it from his face, faint grey and yellow traces ground into his skin, blinking against it. He coughs once, twice. And then he moves on, through the dust, through the city, trying to soothe the itch blooming beneath his skin with motion.

That night, rolled in his jacket in a corner of the house – his house – that he chose as shelter, he makes faint sounds as he dreams. 

_She is queen of a dead world, and she is queen still._

_This world had a winter king, and a summer queen. At the passing, before they died, each placed their hands on the pale round of the caller-to-life, and it glowed brighter at their touch before fading. Until someone answered the song of the caller-to-life, meant to call the next ruler, be it a summer queen or a winter king, the caller-to-life would not glow again._

_Finally, the people tried to overthrow them, to breathe as the world spun around its sun and not by a ruler's life. They slew the winter king, but the summer queen lived. And she slew the world as vengeance and lives, still, in the frozen lands._

When he twists upright and away from the dream, he licks panicked sweat from his lip at the memory of dry chattered laughter. He closes his eyes against the remembered curve of bone, but then opens them again just as quickly. Instead, he scrambles up and makes his way to the roof, where he spends the rest of the night watching the stars wheel by overhead.

The stars are spread into constellations, strange and unlike anything else. He squints, looking up at a close tangle beneath a particularly bright star. It could, he imagines, be a face (two faces intertwined) crowned by the star.

He doesn't think about the horse's head or how the bone looked, heat-flaked and pierced through with sunlight. Or the improbability, even in Pegasus. He pulls his P-90 a little closer to himself, and watches the sky shift until his eyelids drop.

_In the city, there is a street, and above the street, there is an arch. Under the arch, there hangs on the wall what looks very much like a horse's head. Its eye is fly-blown, but if he steps nearer (smell rich and rotting), he can almost hear words in the buzzing (horseman, once I was wise). Another step, and there is nothing but dust in the shape of bone. And then there is nothing, not even when he tentatively touches the stone._


	2. Chapter 2

A few days later and a few minutes after the computers have finished their final run, when Teyla, Ronon, and Dr. Shapiro finally present the most likely correspondence to the Gate symbols for the address, Rodney literally grabs the information with both hands. He pushes off in his rolling chair to reach the laptops hooked into Atlantis's databases, intent upon any information about the planet that might be helpful, even if it's ten thousand years out of date.

With a snort, Ronon glances over his shoulder at Rodney, and takes up the thread of the presentation from Teyla and Dr. Shapiro. "It's a _novete._ Not all of you were here the first time, so. That's the widely known term for a musical form that…"

Rodney freezes as Ronon's voice slowly changes from its familiar low grumble to a louder, more practiced one, dragging his attention away from the laptops. He spins around to jab a finger in the direction of Ronon's head. "You. You've been holding out on me."

Ronon breaks off to give Rodney a very level stare. "Didn't want to talk about it."

Rodney's mouth opens and closes briefly as a bright flush spreads across his cheeks. He presses his lips together, abruptly rolling a hand for Ronon to continue the presentation.

A few hours later, the atmosphere in the conference room is tense as Rodney explains his findings. The ball is perched in its box in the center of the table, put there with precise caution by Zelenka.

"The world behind that gate address had an extensive weather control system in place, one that needed two ATA gene operators. These operators were determined by genetic compatibility," and Rodney rubs his face. "It explains everything – the ball was the key. It searched for people with a strong enough gene to control an entire planet's weather systems. They must not have had a lot of those on the planet itself. I wonder how they passed the thing around Pegasus."

"And a ZPM, do not forget the ZPMs," Zelenka adds. "Many of them. This is not a small planet, this is a large one that is very close to its sun, so it was a harsh world before the Ancients."

Teyla stiffens as she slides into her seat at the table in time to hear the beginning of the discussion. "Are you certain..." she begins, staring hard at the ball and then at Zelenka, and then she nods once to herself. "It is. Then that globe...it is the thing that you hope never comes to your world. They say that when one touches it and is called through the Ring of the Ancestors to that world...that one will be taken forever." Her voice goes soft on the last words as she meets eyes equally dark around the table.

"That was a child-story," Dreadlocks slide as Ronon shakes his head, giving Teyla a skeptical look. "My mother used that to scare me into behaving before I got tall enough for school and learned better. 'Behave, or I'll give you to the city without a name,' " he says as his eyes narrow in the direction of the ball, trying to call up memories long gone. "The city without a name. Ruler of a dead world."

"How is that – different?" Seizing on Ronon's words with her diplomat's ear, Elizabeth frowns. By now, in Pegasus, they've learned what it means for a world to be dead. Only one possible cause. People say only, 'the Wraith came.'

But Ronon says, "The Wraith never came because nobody was there any more. Except the queen. They say she laughed at the Wraith. Because there wasn't any life for them to take."

"The... queen?" A frisson of unease runs through everyone's expressions.

"She was the summer-queen, and her co-ruler was the winter king." Teyla takes up the thread of explanation. "Before they were rulers, they were strangers to the world. That world had a tradition of bringing outsiders through their Ring to be their rulers. They believed that new blood made them stronger. It is a tragic story, and one that I, like Ronon, had not believed to be true. Until now," she adds, glancing at the box with the globe in it.

"Which still doesn't explain why it was in a _box of junk_ here, let alone the fact that a goddamn bowling ball just had to be the shiny object out of _all of the artifacts_ in Atlantis that the Colonel picked to touch," Rodney growls, flapping a hand. "If it was so scary, then –" He pauses, frowning. "Maybe the Ancients took it back – no, no, that wouldn't work. That doesn't make any sense."

"We can argue reasons, or we can get the Colonel back," Lorne puts in when it looks like Rodney and Teyla are going to come to blows over the details of the story. He nods when Elizabeth gives him a grateful glance.

"Just like that," Rodney says. "He's possessed. Has to be, and he won't want to come back, the way our luck's been running, lately. At least it's not the _Genii_ again. Small mercies."

"We'll just knock him out and carry him back." Ronon lifts his eyebrows.

"Remind me to give you a copy of Sun Tzu. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy." Rodney's mouth tightens. "Didn't you ever have a saying like that?"

"Yeah. Doesn't matter. We need Sheppard."

After a moment, Rodney nods slowly. "Just look for the biggest source of Ancient power readings. With the Colonel's luck he'll be right on top of it." Brightening a trifle at the prospect of new technology despite their worry about Sheppard. "A _planetary_ weather network, can you imagine?"

* * *

Later, in the conference room, they look at each other uneasily as they watch the recording from when the robotic MALP had trundled through the open Gate. It shows a world with parched trees and strawgrass. No sign of civilization near the Gate, other than what could be a faint trail leading away toward a small tumble of stones.

"That looks recent," Ronon says, pointing at the bent grasses on the screen, stark in the afternoon light of two suns, one larger and one smaller. "I'd have to go through to be sure. Get more information."

Rubbing at his face wearily, Lorne, who is present as the current military commander, nods at Ronon. "Right. I'll get AR-2 suited up." Even though they've just come back in from off world, Lorne taps his radio to start the preparations to suit up again. He glances at Elizabeth. "Captain Hashimoto'll be the acting commanding officer while I'm off world."

Elizabeth shakes her head sharply as she holds up a hand. "No. We can't afford to lose the top two military officers on Atlantis, let alone the one that's already missing."

"Ma'am." Lorne's expression is very nearly mulish, but Elizabeth doesn't back down. And eventually politeness and necessity win the battle, and he takes a deep breath as he taps his radio again. "Sergeant Stackhouse. You and AR-3 came back a week ago? Gear up – you've got a mission to get the Colonel back." And Stackhouse was a gene carrier, which would make it easier – if they encountered anything.

Teyla and Ronon shift their grip on their weapons and gear as they fall in behind Rodney and Stackhouse's team on the way to the jumper bay. It had taken Stackhouse's team longer to finish suiting up, long enough that Ronon stalks down the hall fast enough that he leaves them all behind.

The ride through the Gate is singularly silent.

The words carved on the tumbled stones near the Gate use Ancient characters. The stones had turned out to be a shattered arch in a style that reminds one of the Marines of Minoan architecture.

"Minoan?" Rodney stares at the corporal, finding his voice. "What are you – a _soft scientist_?"

"An unit in ancient Greek at seminary, but we also studied their neighbors," the man raps out, subsiding at the looks from his teammates. Rodney rolls his eyes at the unspoken, automatic _sir_ from a wet-behind-the-ears Marine, and turns back to his work, dismissing them.

In a development that has Elizabeth and the linguists back on Atlantis scratching their heads, the characters are carved in an order that translates into high, singing babble that they are unsure of how to pronounce, even with their experience with Ancient. The artificially generated version of the spoken characters sounds nothing like the tune the caller-to-life had played, leaving the linguists with nothing to go on.

Teyla and Ronon shake their heads when they peer up at the worn characters while listening to the playback from Atlantis. "Perhaps it is a welcome for visitors." Teyla glances at the others clustered around Rodney's laptop in front of the open Gate. "Some peoples have done things like that, to welcome friends that they have not met to their world."

"Friends that never left again." Ronon rumbles as he fingers his pistol, shaking his head slowly, eyes dark. "The city without a name." 

Whatever its name is, the city has taken John Sheppard from Atlantis. And they have come to get him back.

Leaving the stones to re-board the jumper, they wait as Stackhouse nudges the jumper into motion slowly, rising to follow the faint trail toward the hazy ruins that they can just see in the distance. The motion is deliberate, quite unlike the leap that it would have made under different hands.

Hoping that the trail Stackhouse is following is Sheppard's trail, and not someone else's trail. Praying, if they're praying people, that Sheppard hadn't turned around immediately and dialed out somewhere _else_.

Rodney mutters from his perch in the copilot's seat as he tries to coax the jumper's remote systems into searching for life signs within range. Ronon leans on Rodney's chair, scanning the ground using a small display that Stackhouse pulls up and tucks to one side of the windshield.

"There is no answer," Teyla gives a tight headshake at last when the familiar beeps do not come, betraying her nerves at the lack of response from the Ancient technology.

"God _damn_ it." Rodney finally snarls as he tosses himself back in his chair, hands incongruously careful on his laptop. "The weather network? It's up. Amazingly so since we've got surges, brownouts, blackouts, and god alone knows what else over the entire planetary surface. That kind of interference – I can barely tell _we're_ here, let alone Sheppard. And radio contact over any kind of distance other than sight distance is _right out_." Letting a system break is blackest heresy to an engineer or someone like Rodney, and it shows as he straightens to stab at his laptop as if it's someone's throat, or maybe the Ancients who created a system designed to control the weather of an entire planet –and then left it all to run down.

Shortly, they stop just outside the city walls as everyone leans forward, peering through the windshield at the end of the trail. The city laid out before them is surprisingly complete, crumbling in only a few places. Here and there, a few buildings have fallen in, but most of them are still standing. Trees have climbed through cobbled plazas and died there for lack of water. The mixture of stone and wood scatters before the jumper out to nearly the horizon.

"Big," Ronon murmurs. "Almost as big as Sateda," and disquiet threads through his voice. "It'll take us a while. Unless McKay can figure something out." 

"Oh yes, no pressure _at all_ ," Rodney pulls his eyes away from his laptop to snarl at Ronon as Stackhouse starts the jumper again, rising over the walls to begin their search.

After circling the city several times to familiarize themselves with it, Stackhouse drops everyone else except himself and Rodney off on the ground. They fan out in a standard search pattern through the crumbled city while Stackhouse and Rodney circle overheard in the jumper, hoping to find some sign of Sheppard.

Everyone is quiet as Rodney's running diatribe fades in and out over the radios as he works in the back of the jumper, examining crystals and circuitry. "Weather control system – _predictably broken_ , not like we shouldn't have expected anything else after ten thousand years, and the Ancients just _let it all_ run down. And now I can't even find one measly Colonel in the middle of a rubble pile!"

Stackhouse winces as Rodney slides a crystal into its slot with dreadful precision, and turns back to the front. But he can still hear Rodney muttering to an unseen audience. "Worst of all, the net _isn't even_ completely and totally dead. Just broken enough to send our systems haywire until they don't know what's real and what _isn't_ , which is just _fucking great_."

When the twin suns are nearly at the horizon, Stackhouse exhales and nudges the jumper downward until he can catch most of the searchers on radio, sending them back to the Gate. That done, he calls over his shoulder, "This isn't working. We're pulling back to take a break and try to figure things out." Watching Rodney try yet another jury-rig of the jumper sensors and Ronon shaking his head at the result visible on the windshield, he adds, "If you try anything else, we might fall out of the sky. We need a break."

Rodney pulls his head out of the overhead circuit cabinets to stare at him, and waves a hand impatiently. "Sheppard's out there. We _have_ to find him."

"I know, but if we don't take a break, we might miss something," And Stackhouse meets Rodney's eyes, level. And there's nothing that Rodney can really say to that, so he presses his lips together.

After the search team regroups at the Gate, and after a quick conversation with Elizabeth back on Atlantis, they camp out of the way of the Gate but near enough to the jumper for safety. And just in case. Teyla, a staff sergeant named Vasquez, and Ronon are the lightest sleepers, so their rolls are on the side closest to the Gate.

As soon as it's daylight, Rodney is one of the first people awake. Clutching a mug of instant coffee made from an MRE squirrelled away in his pack, he dials the Gate. In short order he, Elizabeth, and Major Lorne are busy laying plans and putting together schedules for bringing in more teams to search around the clock. Either clock – Atlantis or this world. 

By the time that the Gate has to shut down and Atlantis dials in to send the new search teams in, Rodney is no nearer to a workaround despite a fierce inter-world argument with Zelenka.

He's breathing hard, staring at his laptop and at the shimmering smear in the middle of the Gate ring when Elizabeth breaks into their argument, cutting them off. "Gentlemen," she says, the steel carrying effortlessly across the distance between stars. "You can pick up again after we redial and send the teams through." 

And when the teams come through, they are greeted by the familiar sight of a glaring Rodney standing by the DHD, arms crossed and mouth a thin line. He's rubbing his forehead, but steps forward immediately when he catches sight of the people wearing science-blue. "Right, you people. Get over here – we have a Colonel to find. Make sure he hasn't skipped off to some _other_ world instead of staying put like a good little Colonel." 

* * *

Half-dreaming, John wanders the broken city, fingers reaching out every now and then to rasp against the stones. The P-90 is slung loosely from his vest and not ready in his hands, and his footsteps are slow. When the larger sun is at the proper angle, he stops in a courtyard to watch the shadows through half-shattered stone filigree lengthen and become beautiful. His mind is full of nothing but the curve of stone and light and its ache.

Somewhere behind the shivery yearning, the horse's head mutters in its dry rasp that he should leave, that he should go back to the sky that he knows (cool and dark with strange familiar stars). He ignores its comment with the ease of practice after what feels like days with it. Not everyone is omniscient, and he ignores the twinge that the thought gives him.

But he wonders, distantly, if there is anything beyond this sky for him. The prickle on his skin that he's had ever since he came here (beyond the far Ring, _somewhere_ ) hasn't stopped, and he doesn't know where he could go to make it stop. It burns just under his skin, even as he walks in the light of shadow and stone.

When the suns circle below the horizon, he lies on the roof and watches the progression around the bright star at the center of the sky. Little by little, the stars are uncoiling themselves into constellations that he can recognize, although he always comes back to the faces that he's named the rulers. A queen and a king, together in the sky, which feels oddly right.

The thought haunts him, until at last he follows his feet across red and dun tile and up spiraling stairs. He ignores the shifting in the pit of his stomach. Boots sink into the dust and outstretched fingers become dark as he climbs, the path broken by spears of light from arrow-slit walls.

Then John breaks out of the immuring stone to the wide, wide sky above and the city spread out below. He leans gingerly on crumbling stone, fingers curling around the outside edge (roofs and plazas like so many toy shapes fallen from idle hands).

And at this moment, looking out over the city half-hidden in the dusk, John knows that the queen (beautiful and terrible) could come down from the sky. And she would call him away to her frozen lands, to a place where nothing could ever hurt him again. The terrifying thing is that he doesn't know if he would come, or stay (and remain in the city all his days).

He thinks that it might be nice, though. In its way, the city is like the queen's frozen lands. Here, nothing could hurt him as he wanders the streets (dry and sere), peering into windows and around corners. In a way. He knows (in his heart) that the city has its own dangers, its own allures -- but they are _different_. More of the body -- and isn't that an odd thought to have, in a place born of dreams?

The horse's head is almost comforting, now. It whispers to itself of days when the world bloomed, breathing to life and to silence, turn and turn about. _Caller-to-life_ , it sighs, unfelt breath rattling. 

A breeze curls down from the north, cool and distant in the stillness of the twilit city. John turns his face to it, feeling the air press against his skin. He remembers – knows – that frozen lands are in the north, and shivers involuntarily as something turns over inside. Like letting go, like falling from the spire. He curls his fingers against the rampart, stony grit chewing at his knuckles, and leans until the edge digs into his hipbones, grinding painfully.

Shuddering, until the call of the north is all that there is, not even a thought left of the ancient city beyond this sky.

And then John turns, passing down through the tower, spiraling down to the ground, slipping through the silent city. Kneeling over his pallet, he draws a sharp, hard breath and shuts his eyes as he winds the material around his fingers until he can't feel them. After a moment, he straightens and continues folding the pallet into a neat roll that he can carry. The only traces left of the moment are the reddened marks on his hands, and even these fade.

In the end, John's P-90 goes with him, as does his jacket, after a moment of reflection that goes on almost too long. _Deserts can be cold too_ , the horse's head whispers, the sounds rasping against each other. He folds the jacket over his arm with a small and formless pang as his fingers brush the soft fuzz on the shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbetaed -- if you see any issues or would like to beta, let me know.


	3. Chapter 3

After Rodney and the newly arrived Major Lorne have laid their plans over breakfast, crowded around Rodney's laptop for visual demonstration based on the information that he and Stackhouse had gotten on their flybys, the search teams break up again. The jumpers are kept busy ferrying the teams to strategic points throughout the city, but Rodney stays behind.

Today he's focused on the DHD, trying to figure out a way to sift the list of stored addresses to find out where Sheppard might have gated out to, or if he had gated out at all. And if he can find a way to make it sing, like the bowling ball and the DHD that Teyla had mentioned, well, that'd be a bonus, wouldn't it?

He sits by the DHD, and pries its panel off, stacking them neatly by his side. It's a calculated risk, but he thinks that with the soldiers around and the Gate behind him, they're going to be all right.

And in a few minutes, he's wrist-deep in skeins of glowing circuitry, crystals in his lap and scattered around him as his laptop hums like his own mind. Trying to pull out the addresses that the DHD had dialed to – he knows he can discount the Atlantis addresses – and make some sort of guess at the scope of the search that they're going to have to mount for John if they don't find him. And how long they don't have.

Rodney bites his lip because they're going to find him, but – just in case. He frowns harder at himself and plunges deeper into the puzzle of the addresses, part of his mind absently shifting the notes of the Gate song, ignoring the other Atlanteans watching the tiny jumpers swoop in a slow dance over the city. 

*          *          *

Out in the desert beyond the plain, if John were to turn his head to peer behind himself, he would see a small trail of footprints leading out from the gates of the city, slipping off the stony road winding back up into the hills and pressing into the sand. Tiny grains tumble into each footprint, urged on by the breeze from the north. This gives him an obscure comfort. He doesn't question it.

When his mouth rasps dryly against itself many hours later, John squints at the sand as faint memory stirs. The pebble that he finally settles on is grey and almost perfectly round. The horse's head is a silent presence in the back of his head. He rubs the fine dust off the pebble, feeling its rough surface against his thumb, and then pops it into his mouth. Its weight is slight but noticeable on his tongue, and he presses it against the roof of his mouth as he starts walking again.

As he pushes his way north, he tastes the world in the dust coating his lips and the wet roughness bruising the roof of his mouth. The weight resting on his tongue.

Sand all around him and the bowl of the sky above, he travels in the morning and in the evenings and at night, curling up in a sandy hole under his pallet in the heat of the day. The sound of the sand the only true thing in all that space, a low rumbling sound under each step as he pushes on, tongue dried in his mouth and eyes narrowed to slits against the light. The horse's head sighing with the boom of the sand in a song of a time long faded.

Sometimes he thinks that he sees others walking with him, phantasms in the heat shimmering off the sand. Light-robed men and women that flicker into sight and then out, all with pebbles resting on their tongues as they turn north like iron, like birds arrowing home.

Finally, John finds his way to the end, a creature burned thin and strange. He raises up from his heels to look at the stately arches and towers (echoing the dreaming spires) before him. They spark a faint recollection, something that the horse's head laughs at, a rattle of dry leaves.

As he draws nearer, the stairs leading up to the towers are crazed with time, dulled edges doing nothing to disguise their stark sweep. John loses himself following the stairs with his eyes, skipping from line to arch to tower.

It takes him a moment to register the sound of footsteps as not his own and he looks down. The queen is a woman in a cloak like a peacock's, rainbow gleaming razors. She is beautiful, her eyes hollow and bright. She holds her hands out to him, and her mouth moves in a smile. "It has been long and long since one-who-lives came to this place."

Her voice is a queen's, certain and sure. The brightness in her eyes trembles.

After a moment where he says nothing, she adds slowly, "But thou must need a bath, after thy journey."

The horse's head is silent. For lack of anything better to do, John takes her hands. They are hot against his palms, and he closes his hands. Her smile widens, stark relief plain in the sharp curve, and all at once it is nothing like the yellowed curve he remembers.

They go up the stairs together.

The passages they walk through curve and sprawl, whitewashed walls unpierced by any windows. Eyes half-closed, John feels as though they are walking through the shell of some great creature.  The queen smiles (edge so familiar) as she inclines her head toward the door. "The bathing chamber. Thou will have no difficulty." Less an order than a statement of fact, and John's skin shivers.

John goes inside. And the thing of it is, the queen is right. The controls are simple, two chains hung off small sluice gates for hot and cold water.

Standing in the showering area, he stares at his feet as warm wetness slides over his shoulders, almost too hot for him to bear. Red-brown water swirls around his feet on the cracked tile. He closes his eyes and tips his head back, letting the water splash his face, washing ground-in sand away. The pebble drops out of his mouth to clatter against the baked tiles.

Afterward, as his toes curl in clear puddles around bare feet, John flattens his palms over the pale fabric piled on the bench. Picking it up, he gives the cloth a quick shake, and it turns out to be a robe. The material feels strange against his skin, and his shoulders shift. Swallowing, he turns to leave the chamber, footsteps echoing.

A shadowed mirror rests near the door, and as John passes, he steals a glance at the sharp-eyed stranger in his skin. Even his skin is strange, sun-dark and rougher than seems right to him.

Cloak rustling, the queen rises as he comes into the other room. Bright eyes flicker over him, judging, assessing. "My other's garments fit thou well." A faint smile. "My people wrought well."

He raises his eyebrows in a question, and she shakes her head with a tiny shrug and extends a hand in the direction of the door. "I have prepared food. Come."

The banquet is a small meal at the end of a long table, fine china and bronzed cutlery mixing with rougher clay bowls and mugs. The rustle of the queen's robes is loud in the hall, for she does not take it off before sitting. She opens a bottle of wine for the two of them. It splashes into his glass with grave ceremony, a rich dark color (air heavy with berry sweetness). Seeing his look, her mouth twists. "I remember how to live," the queen says with fierce sturdiness, "from before I became queen."

He can only eat a small bit of the food, simple as it is, and even less of the wine before his head swims and he has to breathe deeply as his fingers curl around his fork. She continues to eat, lips folding around each morsel.

Later, her fork is laid across her plate as she wipes her mouth on the napkin, and he moves his fork to lie across his own plate in a mirror of hers.

The queen studies him from across the table, bright dark eyes taking him in. All of him, and he wants to shift under her gaze. Then she shakes her head slowly, lids dropping over those eyes, and he can breathe again. He leans back in the chair and crosses his arms even though he's alone, the horse's head fled to wherever phantasms live.

When she opens her eyes again, he is glancing around the hall and its silence, its soft buttresses and ribbed arches. She laughs shortly, bitterly, when he tilts his head. "It is no use to look for others. There are no more of my people left."

He frowns, and somehow she already knows what he's asking. "They have all been gone for thousands of years. It was their fate they brought down on themselves," she says with a slow shake of pale curls, stark against the vicious flatness of her voice.

After a moment, she rises gracefully from the table, and gestures to him, so he follows her lead. "It is late, and thou are a guest. Rest, now." She leads him toward a room off the hall that is surprisingly undusty despite the stale air that rushes out when she opens the door. The mattress is stiff with time, but he settles his pallet on top and curls into it.

The chill is strange, his clothes and pallet inadequate proof against it, and eventually he sits up, and rummages through the chest at the foot of the bed for more blankets, less dusty as they are. Spread atop the mattress, the filling in the quilts that he finds crackles whenever he shifts. It's an almost soothing sound after the stark silence of the queen's halls, and he finds himself shifting in slow turns beneath the gathering warmth.

Formless thoughts move through his mind, and gradually he becomes aware of a whisper inside his skull. _Be watchful,_ the horse's head murmurs, a susurration that could be the rush of his own blood in his ears. The warning hangs in his head until he finally drops off to sleep.

*          *          *

 "We found signs of habitation, sir," one of the search teams on the ground radios back. "Very recent," he adds with some hope, knowing that their CO is surprisingly hard to kill.

"Details?" Lorne starts to ask before he's steamrolled by an impatient Rodney, who all but crawls through his own earpiece to shake the details out of the soldier himself.

"Recently moved furniture, a bowl of what looks like beans floating in water, sir," the response comes. "Looks like it's been a couple days. I – think it was the Colonel, all right."

And when the search teams return from the city, the team brings a small patch of fabric with them, stiff with embroidery. Untouched by dust, it's still clean from its last trip through the laundry. Teyla turns the red, white, and blue flag patch over in her fingers. "Perhaps John meant to leave this as a trace for those of us who followed him here," she says as her fingers rub the prickly loops on the back. "It cannot have been of his own will that he came. John is never so careless."

"Maybe." Rodney's expression is even more saturnine as he looks at the patch in her hand. "He couldn't have planned this better than if he _had_. Look at this – a whole goddamn world that doesn't let our detectors or sensors work at all, thus reducing us to good old fashioned grunt work. Which I do not appreciate at _all._ " He points at her with one of the crystals from the DHD, and then he waves it all around before letting it drop to his lap. "I'm about as useful right now as – as something not very useful." 

"You found the way to this world," Teyla reminds him. "That is a thing of great use." She hesitates, looking around. "Is there no way for the weather network to be mended and changed so that it does not block our detectors?"

"If there were, I'd still be useless because imagine that, I don't know where the controls for the network are." Rodney shakes his head and looks at the crystals in his lap. But then he looks up again, and scrambles to his feet, snapping his fingers to get Lorne's attention. "Major. Have any of your teams seen anything – anything Ancient in the city yet?"

"No, but you'll definitely be the second to know," Lorne says as he nods at the nearest team leader – Lieutenant Saffitz – in a clear order to pass it on to the others.

"Second to know?"

"After me." Lorne claps Rodney's shoulder.

"Just tell them – look for the biggest Ancient power readings close by, and to _not touch anything_." For extra emphasis, Rodney jabs the crystal that he's holding at Lorne.

When one of the teams reports back to Lorne, Rodney clicks over to the channel in time to hear someone say, “We've found what looks like the door to an Ancient installation, and we need Dr. McKay to  get over to the central spire, the one hanging over the entire city, to open it now.” Rodney's expression is incredibly torn as he glances at the still partially disassembled DHD.

Then one of the scientists – Rodney thinks it's Dr. Shapiro – says, "Go. We can cover this for you."

Rodney opens and closes his mouth, and then he rapidly packs up his things even as he clutches his tablet to his chest with his other hand. That done, he grabs the nearest soldier with the gene who can play pilot, and starts chivvying him toward the jumper. "Chop chop soldier, what are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?"

Nearly an hour later, most of which Rodney had spent simultaneously picking his way up a treacherous flight of stairs and complaining, he is standing in the center of a circular room. He stares at all the snaking machinery lining the walls in a slow march up to the spire far above, which juts a multitude of needled antennas into the sky beyond. "I'll be double-damned. This is definitely, definitely the heart of the weather network. It has to be, nothing else would be this, this _extensive_." He shakes his head slowly, awed at what had been hiding under the ancient stone sheathing on the outside.

Turning around slowly, tablet half-forgotten under his arm, he circles the silent screens and rubs dust off this console or that, searching until he comes to a particularly big console edged with carved stone tiles. That one gets his computer plugged into it, and he mutters under his breath as he hopes, hissing triumph as the console sluggishly comes to life, tugging the rest of the walls with it.

And then he blinks as dark panels and cracked crystals that spark and fail pick themselves out of the expanse for him, coming back to himself with a bump.

This is all too familiar to Rodney, and he rakes the room a few times, prioritizing, theorizing at that wall's purpose or this console's, before he's clicking his fingers and snapping at the groups of scientists and military that came with him. "Move, move, we don't have all day! We have an entire planetary weather network to get back up and running, especially after some unwashed peasant mob has _obviously_ had its ever-so-delicate way with this."

Then the enormity of what he's saying hits him, and he swallows a little, face going pale. "I-if we don't, then it's going to take us _months_ to find the Colonel just by flyovers and searches. We don't have to get it all the way up, just far enough so we won't have to do that." He breathes out with determination, and then turns to grimly dive back into crystals and circuitry.

Perched on a step high enough to be out of the way, fingers curled into the carving on the step's edges and P-90 at rest on his lap, Lorne watches Rodney and the scientists work, hands grey with millennia of dust. He thinks that they do their best work under pressure, coalescing into a precise dance of discovery and working around each other. But he doesn't say anything, occasionally getting up to touch and activate whatever he is pointed at, trusting them not to blow everyone sky high, most of all Rodney.


	4. Chapter 4

It is light when John wakes, thin sunlight painting a strengthless arch on the wall across the room. He flinches at the floor as he pushes out of bed and straightens, breathing and remembering what cold means. Not heat, not sun so strong that one must flash into ash and smoke.

He leans on the doorframe and peers out into the quiet hall, as empty as it ever was. Except for one other, the one that he cannot see (stern dark eyes). Retreating into his room, John hesitates over the clothes, the smooth nap catching on his calluses. Not wanting to anger the queen, he puts them on, tugging them into place even though the hair on his neck lifts. He wonders, briefly, whose the clothes were as he steps out into the hall, his boots clumping on the floor.

Several wrong turns later, John finally reaches the dining hall. The queen is there, in the act of pouring herself some tea, and he hesitates in the doorway. She looks up, and smiles her sharp yellow smile. "One-who-lives. Come in. Thou are welcome to join me."

The food on the table is unspiced and simple, and John drinks several cups of tea to wash it down. He watches the queen lift the fork to her mouth as though she were eating a morsel rich and fine, and not simple fare.

After a moment, she inclines her head. "Thou must have questions this morning," and he can only nod. Direct as a blade to the heart, she says, "How could I kill my world, my people?" Even though he had said nothing of the sort, even though she lifts the teacup to her lips and takes a sip, the return journey smooth and gentle.

He hesitates, fingers scrabbling to drop his fork onto the table and not the floor.

The queen smiles at whatever she sees in his eyes, the same smile that she has always used, familiar lines in her face. "They died when the men of science killed my other, the winter king." Voice filled with venom undimmed by the centuries that it must have been since her time, since she was truly a queen. "Their sciences said that the time of twinned rulers had passed, that it was time to _stop_."

_The winter king._ John looks down at himself, the soft fabric suddenly harsh against his skin. He pushes back from the table, staring at the pearly smile of the queen. "Without him, there is nothing," she says softly, watching him. "But thou are here, and there is nothing still." A kind of mourning in her voice, like the call of distant birds as they rise toward a bluer sky.

Despite the centuries, her curls are light and golden as they sway with the slow headshake. Eyes fastened with some nameless intensity on him as she repeats herself. "The men of science killed my other, the winter king."

John coils in his seat, caught between flight and staying – to do what, he isn't sure, but – something. Because the words, 'men of science' make him shiver, faintly remember the color blue. She tilts her head as she watches him, intensity sharpening into distant recognition. Of what, he isn't quite sure.

His throat works, the clicking sound loud in his ears. Finally he struggles upright, clenching his fist by his side as he stands, staring down the table at the bright dark eyes raised to him. A sharper shake of his head, the smooth curves of the walls blurring with the motion, thrown into shape after shape.

"Thou are here," the queen says. "One-who-lives." She rises from the table also, chair legs screeching over the stone floor. Her steps around the table are measured and steady, and she comes to him, gazing up into his eyes. "Do thou then, intend to become the winter king? To strip this world of rude summer?"

_Caution_ , the horse's head whispers to John (faint and funereal) as he breathes out, slow and careful. For a moment, he thinks he can feel the grit of bone under his fingertips. Short sharp breaths as he shakes his head at last, no, a shudder between his shoulders that refuses to leave.

A long moment passes, the queen as still as her painted self, smiling only in dust and memory. Then she blinks, dipping downward, turning. An idle finger runs about the rim of her teacup. He studies her profile, round and stern. "Others have come," she says at last. "They said they were the winter ruler. They were wrong – there can be no more winter." Snapping, robes spreading, a fist clenching against nothing. "No more winter, _ever_."

John meets her eyes, an itch deep in his throat, like a point of heat. He takes a few steps back, and turns. Outside the pallid hall, he shudders and wraps his arms around himself, the queen's hiss scratching at the inside of his head in bright lines. 

Closing his eyes briefly, he walks on faster and faster, following the curl of the halls away from the queen. They sprawl in front of him (white and unrevealing), slashed with doorways to rooms filled with nothing. He shudders again, and walks on, searching, focusing on the press of his feet against the floor and not on the prickle under his skin. At the end of one very long hall, a doorway leads to stairs.

With the fervor that comes with something different to do, John thumps up the stairs, uncaring where they go, only that they're something other than endless halls. He peels a hand away from his arm, only now realizing how long it's been by the way that his fingers creak when unbent. The stairs wind upward, and he measures how long it's been by the burn in his knees and thighs.

Breathing hard, shudders filling his shoulders, he takes the next door off the stairs, into some hall with what must be an unimaginably high ceiling, vanished in light. Here, the light spills down pale walls just as they did in the dining hall, but the air is still cool, even in the height of the day. John turns his face up slightly, following the faint trace of coolness that he can almost see into a smaller room with a gallery of windows on one wall.

He leans on one of the windows and leans out, looking down to the small courtyard in front. And then he has to lean back in, closing his eyes. The height isn't dizzying for John, but the coolness at this height is familiar and that makes his head spin.

_Not so old, those rememberings_. Below a lightless eye socket centered on him, bony teeth rattle. _Think, caller._

And John breathes against the spinning (slow and measured) as his fingers curl around the window sill. Then he opens his eyes again and looks out. The tower is on the edge of what becomes a long plain (dusty and grey-green) from the parapet. If John squints, he can see the distant streaks of mountains on the horizon. Worlds away from the desert city and its crumbling spires behind him.

Stepping back from the window, John turns, but the chill remains, slicing through the vague thoughts in his head. He blinks around the room, seeing it for the first time. Along the length of the room, the vaults of each window slides into definition out of bare, choking curves until he can see the delicate filigree on the decorative posts at the far end. Eyebrows rising, he walks down to the end, putting a hand on one of the posts, and the edges prod his palm with certainty.

There's a door by his elbow, and half-turning, he pushes it open.

*          *          *

Wiping his forehead and nursing a number of small cuts on his hands, Rodney looks over the edge of the stairs. He's far above the heads of any of the other people here, except for Lorne, who is dangling his legs over the edge of the landing just below. "Major! What if you get dizzy and fall down to your – to your _death_? Maybe you failed to notice, but that landing – actually, the _entire set of stairs –_ lacks any sort of sane or sensible safety measures to stop idiots from falling to their death."

Lorne looks up at him. "Didn't know you cared, McKay. How's it coming?" He doesn't back away from the edge, continuing to watch Rodney with the same dryly amused expression that he's always had.

Breathing out sharply as he mumbles about Air Force majors who don't know the meaning of the word 'careful', Rodney looks down at his laptop, which has cables snaked here and there into ports that he's found behind paneling in the installation's walls. "We're getting there," he says at last, tone not nearly as enthusiastic as it should have been with an entire installation's worth of Ancient hardware at his fingertips.

He clicks on his radio to check status from the main floor. As usual, it's set to the all-access channel. "Report in, people – how's it coming down there?"

But Stackhouse has apparently been listening as well, because he speaks up after most of the scientists have reported in. "McKay. When we closed the doors, we left Ackerman posted outside, and he just got back from reporting to headquarters. He says – and I checked – and the doors've got carvings on the outside."

"Why are you telling us about _carvings_ when we've got a missing Colonel to find, soldier?"

"Because it could be important. It's got more tiles around the doorframe, and then the middle's got one of a head – and half of it's a skull, the other half's fine. That reminded Ackerman – "

Rodney groans and clamps a hand over his face. "Right, right, that was the name of the one who went to _seminary_."

"—of Hel, he says she's a Norse goddess of the dead, half beautiful, half ugly."

"Norse is not even remotely the same thing as Minoan, and oh, my _point_ still stands." Rodney glares at the distant upturned face. "When you actually have something important to contribute than just _random_ _mythological_ guesses, let me know. Otherwise, just go bother the anthropologists and let us get some _actual work_ done."

"Already did that. There's an inscription around the head itself, and Ackerman took photos to send back to Atlantis when he checked in. Anthropology passed off to Linguistics, and they're looking it over in detail now, but they recognized the words for 'caller-to-life' right off."

"Did they." Rodney's hand drops slowly from his earpiece and he and Lorne glance up at the bronze walls around them.

"So all of this was for the, uh, caller-to-life." The same unease blooming on Rodney's face shifts in the back of Lorne's eyes. "Do you think it's – affecting Sheppard, being on the same planet as all of this? When it called him through the Gate?"

"We'll just have to fix this," Rodney says grimly, head still tipped back toward the distant ceiling. He doesn't answer. And then he goes still, staring upward. "Lorne. Look up. What do you see?"

"I see more stairs," Lorne starts, trying to see whatever it is that's caught Rodney's interest. "The inside of the tower. The skylight." 

"Look at the edges of the steps." Rodney points upward, slowly turning in place. "They have those decorative tiles on the ends, with the squiggles and dots." he says, voice rising. "And look, all the steps have those, and – that'd – that'd just completely and totally explain why the Ancients thought it was worth turning this place into a _deathtrap_ for anyone, wouldn't they." He whirls away and bounds downstairs toward the main console without another word.

"Deathtrap – _Rodney_?" Caught, Lorne scrambles up and chases after him.

"Genius at work here!" Rodney plugs his laptop back into the console, putting it down almost in the same instant as his voice echoes back, bouncing off the walls and the stairs and the spire far above with perfect clarity.

Eyes widening, he drops to one knee with a hiss, reaching out to shove the dust off the worn tiles that line each leg of the console. "That – that's just it, isn't it." Pulling himself up with a hand, he starts counting rapidly under his breath. "—Thirty- _nine._ "

"Thirty-nine..?" Lorne joins Rodney, still frowning at the deathtrap remark, but then his expression clears. "DHD chevrons. Forty, if you count the blank tiles in the middle." He looks up at the stairs. “And the stairs – they're all in groupings of seven—”

"Yes, yes, it couldn't be anything else," Rodney shoots up, stopping partway with a pained sound. "God, my knees are never going to be the same." but then he's off again regardless, shouting for Ackerman to show someone the carvings on the doors as he barrels back toward the stairs and their spiraling message. "Who's got a camera on them? We have to take pictures of the stairs, get these sorted out."  

"Addresses," Finally, Rodney straightens from the laptop and its welter of photo thumbnails amid the sea of hastily sketched diagrams on a lined pad donated by one of the scientists. "They're all addresses. We should've guessed, sequences of seven and the same originating symbol – _idiot_ – I bet all these are addresses for the worlds that these people sent the caller-to-life to, to find staff for the weather network. And they're all Gate _songs_. I should've – we should've guessed, _goddamned bowling ball_."

Tilting his head, Lorne stares at the diagrams as Rodney slides them around on the floor, trying to find patterns. "The first symbol is probably the chevron of origin for this world, but how do we find out what symbol maps to which chevron?"

"The caller-to-life," Rodney mumbles. "Have to call Atlantis, get them to play back that Gate song  – or. Or they could send it back, if I didn't worry that it might be some paradox that some incredibly, _stupidly paranoid_ Ancient just might have programmed to explode the minute it got back through the Gate."

"…Playback it is," Lorne catches the nearest soldier's eye and jerks his chin. With a nod, the soldier disappears back through the double doors to the outside. "Why do we care about the – Gate songs?"

"Because," Rodney meets his eyes, more saturnine than ever. "they're the only clue we have for hacking into this network. Once I know what language or even syntax that it uses, we can try to hack in. Right now? Everything's on audio, and it's designed only to accept that goddamned screeching as commands, right from this console. Why, I have _no earthly idea_ at all. Maybe Ronon does, I don't know, but I'll bet he does."

"It's a church," one of the other scientists says quietly as Rodney clicks over to Ronon on their team channel. "Ackerman said something like that when I was asking him about the doors. He mentioned a church in France somewhere, I think. The architecture, the systems, the acoustics – it has to be."

"Religion," Rodney sighs as he closes the connection. "Just the ticket for holding sway over the great unwashed masses by performing _voodoo rituals_ to fix the weather here…" He trails off. It's nothing new they haven't seen on a hundred other planets in Pegasus. 


	5. Chapter 5

Back on his stair-perch, Lorne tips his head against the wall and listens as the scientists hover over consoles, watching keenly as Rodney taps in a final string of commands into his laptop, the result singing out tinnily through its speakers. He startles faintly as the machinery in the walls shivers to life in response, humming a low, slow sound over the farther sounds of others continuing their tasks without pause. The hum throbs in his brain, a distant soughing like something great breathing in its sleep.

"Major," Rodney shifts to reach over with his fingertips and slide a final crystal into place, "think this place _on_. Your turn to do something really useful."

“It's already on,” Lorne starts, but at Rodney's look, he breathes out, absent, caught in the humming of the machinery. "Useful. Right," he says as he lifts his eyes to the distant ceiling and flattens his palms to the floor and thinks _on_ , and _louder_.

It's like and not like Atlantis's song, younger somehow. The discordant singing – it's definitely singing now – spins higher in response, and then the people below glance at each other and ask each other warily, "Do you hear that?" Lorne tries to catch his breath, but there's a smile on his face as he listens to the brightening sound.

"It's working," he finally says instead of clicking his radio on. "I can feel it."

Rodney glances up at Lorne, momentarily silent. "You can?" Then the singing machinery arcs out into a high, clear crescendo that has him closing his mouth, listening to the strange chords that burst onto the air, fitting themselves into a whole that makes Lorne's back teeth rattle before fading away into the comfortable hum of before.

"I think we did it," someone murmurs over the all-access channel, and there's a flurry of activity below. "We got in." There's a faint rattle of dry laughter near Lorne, but he's too busy watching Rodney zero in on the speaker to see whoever else is on the stairs with him. When he glances over a few moments later, the stairs are empty of anyone else but himself. 

"Great," Rodney waves a hand over the edge of the stairs, peering at the people below. "Map any and all sources that're going in or out of the network. Command, power – get it all. Let's get on the base stations – chop chop. Unless the Ancients were tragically stupid, they wouldn't have made this the only base station on the planet," he adds in an aside to Lorne.

In the end, it's the weather network that saves them. The satellites circling far above are singing the same song that they had heard in the headquarters. That same breathless _crescendo_ rising only to fall again in a mirroring descant as it leaps across the sky – and down to the ground _here_ and – somewhere _else_.

"That's it," Rodney punches in a few more commands, vindicated, and charges toward the door, juggling his laptop and tools as he goes. Lorne jogs after him and catches up easily just as Rodney throws back over his shoulder, "Found the only nodes in the network that keep shifting connections, that's because the sats are taking turns sending coordinating data to the stations, and now we know approximately where they are based on combining that and geographic data from the jumpers."  He trails off into intricacies of networking detail that Lorne obligingly spaces on.

"Zelenka, the jumper systems. Kusanagi and Hayden, you get everything nonessential loaded up. You're going to have to stay here with some of the soldiers to babysit the network, and you better not fuck it up." Lorne catches Stackhouse's eye and nods for him to collect his team.

"The interference, it is clearing right up!" Zelenka says in Lorne's ear, jubilant. "Crystal clear outside in the sky and on our systems." Without immediately clicking off, they can hear him saying to the lieutenant assigned to him, " _Prosím_ , take us up right away, we must search for the Colonel immediately."

As Lorne walks out the doors with their carved dual-faced beings on each side, he sees Rodney outside muttering as he looks up into the sky. A brilliant shade of pale blue, with not even a hint of a cloud anywhere except at the horizons, and even they're wisping into nothing. "What's wrong, Doc?"

Rodney pulls his glare from the sky and transfers it to him. "It's absolutely clear when it wasn't, oh, just half an hour ago."

"That's a problem? I thought we came here to fix the network, so it didn't—"

"That is just _not natural_ , even for the Ancients who take an extremely dim view of noninterference except when it suits them," Rodney starts, and then he takes a distracting breath. "Weather is huge, Major, and this is like – it's like you turning the tap to a garden hose and expecting water to start coming out the other end half an acre away right that second."

"Leftover interference," Lorne gets it, and he wishes he didn't because now it's his turn to frown up at the sky as they head toward the grounded jumpers. "But the network's working," he offers a bit weakly in the face of Rodney's leaden glare. "Shouldn't that have sucked the power right up if it was hanging out there?"

"And this is why you're the Air Force major and I'm the _head scientist_ on Atlantis," Rodney rolls his eyes as he catches up inside Jumper Two and drops into the copilot seat. "Fine, let me try this a different way. You do have a laptop, and you know how to use it, I hope?"

Without waiting for a response, he barrels on, hands flying. "Well, you may have observed that when you turn it on, you get boot screens scrolling by. Memory tests, splash screens, operating system setup, et cetera. You don't get your laptop into an usable state right away because it has to warm up. Multiply that exponentially for something the size of a _planet_."

Lorne breathes out and concentrates on closing the rear hatch as the last of Stackhouse's team settles into the back, with Stackhouse himself in the copilot seat. He takes off and lifts into the sky, turning until they could see the Gate if they knew where to look across the barren expanse of desert. He glances across at Rodney. "Well, now it's working." A clearing of his throat. "And we can figure out where to look for the Colonel – if he's still on planet." 

Rodney's mouth tightens. "Already there," he says with a flap of his hand as he stares at his open laptop. "Working on it," he mutters as he taps his radio in between typing. "Simpson? The network's rebooted and up, you should have noticed that by now unless you really are as tragically dense as I think you are. Yes, yes, we're looking for the Colonel, we're not playing marbles here. Listen up carefully. I want you to start investigating the network, and I want to know what's going on. I am a suspicious man, and the fact that the network came back online as cleanly as this does not make me happy _at all_."

Lorne quirks a brief smile at the familiar ranting as they soar toward the Atlantis encampment at the edge of the city. The jumper is quiet except for Rodney muttering to Zelenka and Simpson over the radios and simultaneously typing away.

"Caller-to-life?" Rodney frowns abruptly, the new note in his voice making Lorne come to attention. "That sounds – well. I thought that was what we found. The, the ball, oh, and the weather network," he says as he rolls a hand in a _keep up here_ way. He frowns some more as he listens, and curious, Lorne clicks over onto the general off world channel that the scientists use.

It's the linguist on Ackerman's team, a Dr. Giles, and Lorne watches as Rodney makes a face. "The literature in the central tower – we photographed it, and it was a good thing we did because it crumbled right away. Some of it was in Ancient, enough for me to read some of what it said, the handwriting's terrible, to speak nothing of the material degradation. But yes, it talked about the caller-to-life using pronouns for both the inanimate and for the animate. So whoever got brought here by the caller-to-life was also called the caller-to-life by the people of this planet."

"Yes, yes, and that's…" Rodney pauses, blinking. "That's how they could control the weather network. They really were – that. Not just, uh, figuratively."

The thought prickles between them, in the silence. A planet's worth of power, poured through a pair of minds. Or a single mind. Lorne's eyes meet Rodney's, and he turns around to push the Jumper higher in the sky, spinning the red line on the display faster as they soar toward the encampment.

Behind him, he can hear Rodney's voice going hard. "Listen, was there, just possibly, any scrap of enlightenment that you might have found about our missing Colonel in all of that?" It's in times of stress that Rodney rises to the occasion, that his genius _shines,_ and he proves it as he relentlessly interrogates everyone on the channel, examining and discarding trails of evidence, fitting shreds into new trails to follow even as his fingers fly on the keyboard.

*          *          *

The room beyond makes John stop short, palm outflung against the silvery wood of the door. It's filled with jagged splinters of chairs and tables and at the back, a bed with its frame hacked into near unrecognizability. Motes of dust flicker in and out of the sunlight and make everything look golden. _They killed my other, the winter-king_.

This should be a tomb, but if it is, it's an empty one. As John walks through the pools of sunlight in the room, the bright motes swirl up around his boots until it feels like he's walking through fire. He circles around the splintered piles of dark wood until he's nearly at the bed. John's shoulders and mouth tighten at the rage apparent in the gouges and hacks, even these many centuries later. He doesn't touch the rotting sheet or mattress as he kneels to look closer.

Half-hidden between the mattress and the frame, there is a glitter of something, and John's attention sharpens. He leans forward, shoving handfuls of rotting material out of the way until he can touch the glitter. It's smooth and cold to the touch, and when John wrenches at it, it scrapes alarmingly along the rotting wood which powders with each jerk. He perseveres however, shifting in ginger little tugs, until he's holding a battered circle of silvered metal in his hands.

It refuses to warm to his hands even when he takes it over to the window to look at it closer.

_The winter king's crown,_ the horse's head whispers. _Many searched for that, and most of all, the queen._ It sounds much closer than usual, so much that John has to glance over his shoulder to make sure he's still the only one in the room. He turns, frowning at the hulking ruin of the bed. _None of the people would come in here after – that which was left was taken away._

John shivers at a flash – whose, he isn't sure – of the queen standing there, eyes terrible as her fists made too-small knots in the ruined sheets. He looks down at the crown in his hands (worn by time and desperation) and wonders what the last winter-king had been like, if he had been anything like the queen.

When he takes another step, the air is suddenly chill and he gasps as it shifts through his clothes. Breath after breath are _cold_ , filling his head with brightness. He drops the crown and heat returns, pressing along his skin with a shudder until he picks it up again. Turning the circle, worn by time, over in his hands, he wonders what the winter king had looked like. Before he became something to be taken away.

Breathing out slowly, John turns and passes out of the room, going down the stairs with the crown dangling from the hand not skimming along the outer wall. Shivering with the cold shocking up his arm, he half expects to see the queen waiting at the foot of the stairs, but there is no one there. Looking around, he stands there uncertainly.

Urged on by caution, John takes a step toward the room he slept in, walking steadily. The crown is pressed against his leg, utter chill coiled around his fingers. He thinks that if he looked down, his fist would be ice, creeping up his arm to turn the rest of him likewise. Nothing interrupts him, and he slips into the room with relief. The crown is dropped on his bed as he doubles over onto his knees, frozen hand clutched to his chest, gasping against the return of warmth.

When he can focus again, he blinks at the white-on-white graining in the stone floor a few inches from his nose. His muscles creak as he straightens slowly, and he licks his lips before lifting his arm and flexing a completely normal hand. Not quite believing it, he touches that hand with the other.

Pushing up onto the bed with an elbow, John sees that the crown, perversely, is lying quietly in the folds of his blankets. His mouth tightens, but he pushes himself the rest of the way up and shoves the crown deeper into the tangle of blankets before collapsing onto the bed. He shudders faintly at the thought of what the queen would do if she found the crown. It's not a comfortable thought, and he turns his head to the side instead, watching the featureless texture of the walls.

_What will you do?_ In his head, the horse's head is the insistent tap of branch against branch. _You have the winter-king's crown. Will you become the queen's?_ John's mouth forms around a sound. He rubs a thumb along the sturdy weave of the sheets on his bed with fierce interest, and does not answer. Eventually, he falls asleep.


End file.
